


34 Kendal Street, Minoa, New York

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Veep
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Family, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Siblings, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-03-29 00:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3876121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4x04 AU. Dan stays on the phone with his mom and reluctantly agrees to come visit while he licks his wounds. But when a little of DC get dragged along for the ride, his past and present collide in a way he never prepared for. A story about all the places that used to be home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. These Places and These Faces are Getting Old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is based off a very special song called "14 Dwight Ave, Natick, Massachusetts."

He lay on his couch, still in his weekend jeans and the baseball shirt from yesterday. Three empty beer bottles rolled around on the ground below and a fresh one was wedged in between his hip and the couch cushion so he didn’t have to hold it. The news was blasting some inane drivel about Selina's peace talks that he was sure his subconscious was catching and picking apart. The rest of him didn't have the energy. 

He took his tie off at some point, he can't remember when, probably last week, and he wound and unwound the striped red silk around his hands, his wrists, as he stared at the ceiling. It kept his hands busy, which was a convenient excuse not to answer the beeping phone. 

It was his landline, and it hadn't stopped fucking ringing since the news of his “resignation” broke. But it wasn't any new job offers, or even a sympathetic person he could manipulate into sleeping with him. Besides the NSA, only two people even had the number for his landline, and the calls they made were the most grating thing in the entire fucked up scenario.

_Danny honey, we’re so sorry about what happened with the president. We’re here all weekend if you need someone to talk to._

_Dan, your sister says you're not even on the news anymore. That's good, right? You should talk to her, she got her chin tucked or something and she's been at the hospital for a couple of days. She'd love to have some company._

_Dan kiddo, please call your mom, she’s getting a little…anxious._

_Danny darling, I know you're sad, but please just give me a quick call to let me know you're alright. Me and Dad are worried about y-_

He groaned and forced himself up into sitting, pawing at the phone while he downed half of the bottle. He pressed talk with his thumb, making the voicemail fall mercifully silent.

"I'm not  _sad_."

"Oh, there's my boy." The relief in Rebecca's voice was palpable and he hated it.

"Hi. I'm alive. Goodbye."

"Wait! How are you doing, hon?" His mother sounded worried, which was not unusual. He could almost see her sitting at the kitchen table, tapping her fingers warily against the warped maplewood. He exhaled through his nose, trying not to snap at her.

"I got fired. I feel like shit."

" _Daniel_."

"Fine, crap, crud, whatever. Don't worry about it, I'm going to be fine. You lose your job, you're radioactive for awhile. That's just how it works.” He took another long swig of beer. It was bitter and flat and awful, just like his life.

"But do you have enough money for rent? Food? Are you sleeping, taking care of yourself?"

He felt himself tense, hot, furious anger bubbling up in his stomach as he watched the Selina parade around on the news. He set that up, he should be there, not on the couch being lectured by his  _mommy_. 

"Yes, I am taking care of myself, Mother." He took another sip, finishing off the bottle.

She said something about Mary then, how he should send her a card for making it through her fucking plastic surgery. He curtly refused, getting antsy. He wished she would just shut up, he needed to go to the bar, he was all out of beer.

"I've got to go." He said, cutting her off mid-sentence. 

"What? Why?" _Where?_ He could hear in her voice.

“Cause-Cause I'm going for a run." He improvised  wildly, though he hadn't taken his sneakers out of his closet since last May, at least. Until recently, bolting around the West Wing and living off coffee and mints was the only weight loss strategy he'd needed.

"Okay..." Rebecca sounded doubtful. "Be safe. I love you."

"Okay. Bye." He clicked off the TV and made to to the same with his phone.

"Wait!" She said again and he wanted to tear his hair out.

" _What_?" He did snap that time, and he could almost hear her bristle on the other end of the line. He stood, setting the fourth empty on the ground to distract himself.

“Hey, there's no need for that tone. I thought, since you don't have anything happening right now, if you might want to come for a visit."

He was only half listening, his hands already on his jacket and wallet for the bar. "Come where?"

"Come home."

He stopped, stooped over his cluttered coffee table.

"You want me to come up there? To  _Minoa_?" He lowered his voice on the last word, like it was dirty. 

He heard his mother shift, the twist of a tap turning on. Jesus Christ, she was doing the dishes. 

"We haven't seen you in nearly four years. You didn't even come back for Christmas."

"I was-"

"Working. I know. But now you're not. It as good a time as any. We miss you Danny."

He closed his eyes and rubbed the left one with his free hand. "Please stop calling me that."

"I'm not asking you to  _move_. I just think it would be nice to have you back for a weekend. Me and your father aren't getting any younger, who knows how many more chances we’ll have to have all our babies under one roof? Christmas is a long way off..." 

"Jesus Christ Mom." He said before he could stop himself, and he feels her glare through three states. "Sorry." He relented. Rebecca Egan was in rare form with her Catholic guilt this evening. 

"I just think it would be good for you to get away from all that...craziness. Just for a couple of days."

He looked around his apartment, where take out boxes and empty beer glasses had started to pile up. He looked at his phone, dark and silent. He looked at himself in the dark reflection of the TV screen, in his socks and stubble. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

“Fine. Okay." 

"...okay?" His mother sounded suspicious for a moment, like it was an elaborate trick. He almost bailed right then, but deep in his stomach he felt a curdling, self-reproach starting to form where it hasn't in years. Fucking Catholicism.

“I’ll take the train to Syracuse, I can see you guys on Saturday. Today's Friday, right?" He used to have the date down to military hours, but he'd lost the will to keep track now.

"Yes, it is.” Rebecca is delighted, and he regretted his decision more with every passing second. “Oh, my baby's coming home. Dave and Mary won't believe it."

Dan shook his head, clapping a hand on his forehead. "No, don't tell Dave and Mary-"

“Jim honey! Dan's coming to see us this weekend, tell the kids."

"Dave's almost forty." Dan finds himself absurdly arguing, but it's like talking to an enthusiastic brick wall.

"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow. Ack! This is so exciting. I love you sweetheart."

"Okay. I'll see you soon.” 

He hung up and wondered if the lack of work had made his brain go soft. There was no other reason he would agree to go back to New York if he had literally _anything_ else to focus on. The realization made him want to open another beer, only to be hit once again with devastating fact that he was out.

He goes to head to the bar, thinking he'll do a couple shots before doing something drastic like actually getting on a goddamn train to Upstate New York. It took his tipsy and angry mind ten minutes to realize he had his wallet and laptop and his satchel swung over his shoulder. He noticed a short time later he was also heading in the wrong direction. By the time he wandered, slightly drunk, into the AmTrack station, he wondered if it’s possible to get a 5150 placed on himself, as he was clearly experiencing some sort of walking insanity.

He stood at the break in the turnstile, one tiled path leading to the Amtracks while the other went down into the local subway. Dozens of men and women in sharp suits were rushing past him in both directions, and for a second he wanted to scream and throw his stupid bag onto the train tracks, possibly going down with it.

"Hey, look who crawled out of the bottom of the barrel.” 

He turned and saw her standing at the end of the commuter turnstile, her cell phone pinned between her ear and her shoulder as she pulled out the handle on a black, rolling suitcase. Her hair was in it’s usual uniform sheet of blonde, and she smirked up at him like the cat who ate the canary.


	2. Two Tickets to Paradise

He clicked his jaw. He had forgotten about the stupid train initiative; the party was pushing an environmental bill through Congress and everyone had to take anti-petrolium forms of transportation to show support. Of course Amy wasn't on some posh plane, but down here to witness his shame.

“Look who got left behind when the President went to the Middle East.” It’s weak, but he was too fuzzy to come up with anything better. He felt small and common standing in front of her polished persona in his stupid jeans and Chuck Taylors, and those were two things he absolutely did not stand for feeling.

“You skipping town?” Amy asked, nodding to his meager belongings. Dan instinctively tightened his grip around the strap of his bag. Jesus fuck, he was turning into Gary.

“I’m just taking a business trip. Going to do some networking.” He nodded to her rollaway suitcase, palming the inside of his bag, trying to locate his phone so he could look busy. “What about you?”

“I have a meeting with Selina’s New York office, we got to bring in a face to show them how much we fucking appreciate their hard work or some emotionally validating bullshit." She jutted her chin towards the AmTrack and Dan almost dropped his bag and run like a fucking cheetah. But he managed to stay cool. _Be the ice man, be the statue._ She started walking past him and he fell into casual step. "You?"

“I’m-Yeah, I’m going to New York too."

"Oh, nice. Hey- vestie!" Amy snapped at one of the people at the counter, a girl barely out of college. "Give me a ticket same as his. Do they have first class on trains?" She asks Dan, but he doesn't answer. He barely stops his eyes from widening.

The girl scanned Dan's ticket and printed Amy out an identical one. She barely glanced at the gate number before stuffing it in her bag. Her cellphone started beeping, so she stepped away from Dan and started arguing with some unlucky bastard in hushed, heated tones. 

* * *

_“Everybody, this is Roger Silver, one of our top operatives. This is Jacob, Joseph, Kelly, and…Don?” The woman leading the group of interns through the strangely white and clinical building says, as an impressive looking man with winter white hair and a sharp black suit exits his office._

_“Dan.” He straightened his new tie and shook the lobbyist’s hand, tight and firm like his book had told him to. “Dan Egan, hi.”_

_“You’ll like Dan, Roger, he’s from New York too.” The woman says, who could_ _apparently remember his home state but not his name.Maybe it was a power move, he think suspiciously._

_Roger raises his bushy white eyebrows. “Ah, a man after my own heart. What borough?”_

_“Oh, um, not the city. Upstate.” Dan says and Roger’s face slackens._

_“Oh, that’s nice. June, I understand one of this number is Peter Rosen’s grandson?”_

_The fucking Jacob kid raises his hand and Roger sweeps over Dan without another glance."_

_He pinpoints his mistake when he did his nightly mental review of all his conversations that evening. When you said New York, people saw skyscrapers and taxis and bridges and somebodies. Only dummies added the upstate, he scolded himself. Only people who didn’t want to move forward. _

_“Where are you from, Dan?"_

_“New York?”_

_“Ah, the Big Apple.”_

_Just nod._

* * *

He couldn't say anything.

He wouldn’t correct her mistake, he trained himself too well. He boarded, convincing himself that the glorified horse and carriage would make a stop in the city anyway, she never had to know.

Amy slid into the seat across the aisle with a polite nod and for ten minutes he watched her stare intensely at her phone. God, he missed burning his corneas on computer screens. The train started to move and Dan started to breathe, barely giving it a thought when the conductor came down to punch in both of their tickets and was almost asleep when they get out of DC. He’s so tired.

The intercom crackled on. "We thank you for taking this nonstop train from Fairfax, Virginia to Syrcause, New York. Estimated Arrival time is 9:18 PM Eastern Standard Time. "

His eyes opened so fast it was almost comical. He reached across the aisle and whacked Amy with his ticket.

"Ow, what the hell?"

“Amy, this train is nonstop." 

She blinked at him like he was simple. "Yeah. It's bad enough we have to take Thomas the fucking Tank Engine, at least they're not making us stop at every kitschy Maryland gas station on the..." Her words left her as the background noises fully processed in her mind. "Wait, what bumfuck shanty town did they just say we're going to?"

"Syracuse, watch it." The last part was stupid and reflexive and what got him. Amy's head swiveled so sharply on her neck he was surprised that it doesn't just fall off.

"Oh my God, you meant to take this train. You-" her eyes widened and she actually withdrew a few inches, like he was contagious. "Jesus Christ Dan, are you going  _home_?"

"Hey, keep it the fuck down."

"Why? Is your mom dying? Did you kill her?"

“Hahafuck you."

"Okay, as much as your spiral into rock bottom is fun to watch, I need to stop this Orient fucking Express."  She stood and wobbled with the movement of the train towards the conductor, who was at least two cars away by this point. Dan watched her go and fought the heat rising to his face. Why was the universe punishing him in this way? 

She came back fifteen minutes later with an absolutely murderous expression on her face, heels clicking in tiny, stiff steps. She dropped down next to Dan, leaving her bag unattended in the other seat. If their fellow travelers weren’t just alcoholics and autistic train fanatics, they both might’ve been worried.

“They won’t stop the fucking train.” She seethed. “I work for the President of the United fucking States, and they won’t stop the fucking train.”  She turns on him. “This is all your fault.”

He scoffs, crossing his arms. “Excuse me?"

“You distracted me, I didn’t look at my ticket.”

“Ah, you’re just used following me everywhere.”

She flipped him off with a perfectly manicured finger and reached across the aisle, dragging her bag over with a huff. “I’m going to get Sue to send a helicopter for me or something, take me back to DC once we get to your sad little ‘city’.”

“What about the New York office?”

“Fuck ‘em. People from New York are the worst anyway.”

He shifted in his seat. “Get Selina to video conference them. It’ll be such an upgrade they won’t even be mad for the delay."

She paused, nodding thoughtfully. “That’s pretty good.” One of his favorite things about Amy was that she didn’t get offended by sentences like that. She understood that everyone was just a piece in the game. His fingers were itching with how badly he wanted to be playing again. 

“So seriously, is your mom sick? Am I like a dick if she is?”

“No. Well, she is a devout Catholic so that might be a symptom of something, but…no.”

“Then why are you going into the wilderness?”

“It’s not the fucking wilder- I just have to go see them.”

“Okay.” Amy said, holding his gaze awkwardly for what her mind was probably counting as an appropriate amount of time, and then turned back to her phone. Dan sighed, takes out his computer, and tried to send out a few more resumés on the train’s horrible Wi-Fi. 

* * *

It was dark by the time they crossed into New York, passing by Binghamton and Ithaca and Cortland with what felt like increasing speed. Wind picked up and ran through the trees they raced by, and the windows were starting to cool in the northern night air. There were so many trees and lopsided farms half-built on hills, he'd forgotten.

Dan swallowed hard.

Amy didn’t notice, her focused face and bouncing eyes only illuminated by the blue light of her phone.

And too fast, too soon, the damning intercom had come back on and there they were, off the train and out on the sidewalk, staring Syracuse in the face.

It was mildly raining, the wind getting fierce and tossing their jacket flaps and hair back and forth. The other passengers started to disperse, walking down the street or climbing into the cars of people who came to get them. Dan stepped out into the street, trying to hail a taxi, trying to remember if Syracuse even ran taxis. Amy was at the end of the curb, back on her phone, yelling at Sue. He was glad she was keeping her distance. She’d witnessed enough of his humiliation for the next ten years - if either of them lived that long.

“Shit on my shoes.” Amy hung up her phone, and before he could move away she stalked over next to him, filling the air with cheap shampoo and clean sweat. “Sue says they can’t get me.”

“Why? The weather?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded bitterly. “That, and it won’t look good if they get me before before we bring home a detained journalist, you know?”

He scoffed. “I could’ve told you that.”

She scowled, and as if controlling karma, a loud honk punctured the quiet rain and stillness of the night and Dan’s foot slipped off the curb.

“Fuck!” His ankle rolled and smarted.

A burgundy minivan, the owner of the car horn, drew up on the curb, rumbling. The passenger's window rolled down as it slowed to a stop in front of them.

“Hey little brother. Long time no see.” Dave waved from behind the wheel. “And who is this lovely lady?”

Dan hadn’t gone to church in twenty years, but suddenly he found himself looking up at the stormy sky, praying for the ground to open and swallow him whole.


	3. The House That Built Me

It seemed appropriate that Dave was four years older than Dan, Amy found herself thinking from the second row of the minivan, because he almost looked like a prototype of his little brother. The lightest smattering of freckles and thick dark hair were there, but he was a little thinner, a little more gangly, with hands and a head that were slightly too big. Dan 1.0. 

He was also incredibly smiley, and it didn’t look forced. He was actually cheerful -  _pleased_  - to be driving around in fucking farm country at 9:30 during a storm. He had insisted on bringing Amy into the car, and sunnily coerced her into staying with Dan at their parents house for the night, until the storm cleared and Sue got the political okay to send some sort of aircraft to save her.

“Oh, you know, it’s fine, I’m just going to find a hotel.” She’d said, waving vaguely at the dark streets around them. Dan nodded vigorously in agreement.  _Yes. For the love of God. Do that. Leave._

Dave gave her a mock-reproachful look. “Amy, our parents will kill us if we leave you out here in the rain.”

“Promise?” Dan muttered, and Dave rolled his eyes. 

“An outward-bound train probably isn’t coming for a day or so. No use hanging around here."

He was right, Amy'd googled the schedule five times on the ride up. She was cold and wet and pissed at Sue and Dan and most of all her own idiocy. She was tired.

So she sighed, held out her small suitcase, and allowed herself to be politely abducted. Dan actually cringed when she sat down next to him.

They drove out of Syracuse and down a winding and lightless road. Dave chatted at Dan, who gave him terse, monosyllabic answers.

“So how are you doing, besides you know, the job thing?”

“Fine.”

“Any girls or, you know, anyone interesting?"

“No."

“Ah, that’s fine. Sometimes it’s good to focus on yourself. How’s the weather down in DC?”

“Warm.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet it’s getting beautiful, this time of year. Hey, what’s with the man purse, is that all you packed?”

“Yup.”

If Dave was frustrated with the one-sided conversation, it didn’t show; He'd probably been holding ones just like it all his life. Amy tried to keep her attention on her phone, which to her panic was rapidly losing bars.

“Shit.” She muttered, letting it drop to her thigh with a slap. Dave glanced at her in the rearview mirror. 

“Sorry, cell reception’s not too good when the weather’s like this. Our parent’s house has a landline, if it’s urgent.”

“Jesus Christ Dave, it’s not 1992.” Dan hissed, and Dave just rolled his eyes again. The man was unflappable. Amy looked down at the sticky seats, loose Cheerios and an abandoned green action figure of some sort rolling around. She pulled her shiny black heels a little closer together.

“You have kids?” She tried her hand at small talk.

Dave’s eyes lit up. “Yup! My little girls, Bethany and Katie. They’re two and four. Did Danny never mention them?”

“No,  _Dan_  didn’t think it was relevant.” He snapped, and in the same moment, went pale. Amy followed his gaze. Dave's headlights were thrown across a small blue sign a few feet off the muddy ground.

**Now Entering-** **Village of Minoa-** **Pop. 3,449**

Amy leaned down, pressing her chin against her collarbone to keep from giggling. Not only was Dan Egan from No One Cares, New York - he was from a fucking  _village._

“Shut up.” He seethed. She raised her arms at her elbows in mock innocence.

“I didn’t say anything.” 

“I swear to God I will push you out of this HellMobile.”

“But aren’t you be worried about inciting an angry mob of _villagers_?” 

Dan stamped on her foot and she swore. Dave glanced at them warily in the mirror as he turned down a skinny side road - Kendal Street.

“Home sweet home.” He sing-songed, pulling into a driveway right at the end of the street. For the first time, he sounded ominous.

Casa de Egan was a massive white country house, a two-story wooden block that only people who lived in the middle of nowhere could get away with building. A neat brick walkway cut through the manicured lawn to a red front door. Separating it from the street - for Minoa had no sidewalks - was an honest-to-God picket fence. Amy almost made some sort of Stepford Wife joke, but Dan looked even whiter, so she just got out of the car.

Dave helped her with her bag and walked them to the front door, rapping on it twice.

“Sarah is at a conference in Troy, so I’m home with the girls all weekend. Call if you need anything.” He inclined his head to Amy. “It was very nice to meet you, Amy.”

“Yeah.” There was a pause, but she didn’t add anything else. She hadn’t even wanted to be here, she wasn’t going to thank him for dragging her farther into the beginning of a Stephen King novel. Dave just nodded, as if he had been expecting this from one of Dan's friends.

“It’s really great to see you, buddy.” Dan glowered, and Dave shrugged it off, walking back down the path. And as the door swung open, Amy could swear he was humming.

“Danny! Jim, he’s here, he…oh my Lord, who is this beautiful girl?”

Dan balled his hand into a fist and rapped it rigidly against the side of his leg. Amy smiled weakly, having a feeling that Dave was just the beginning.

* * *

Jim Egan was a tall, round man with thick gray hair and an impressive mustache, who took Amy’s coat and set about making some coffee to warm them up - he didn’t say much, but he didn’t seem threatening. Rebecca was short and a little chunky and held a dozen signs of Dan in her face, sharp brown eyes and slightly overwhelming smile, a little too manic to put people at ease. She wouldn’t stop hugging her son, who went stiff as a board whenever she touched him.  

The Egans wore nice pajamas, tightly stitched wool in light colors. The plush couches and finished wood floors bore the signs of people who were reasonably well-off, but either didn’t know how to show off their fortune or simply didn’t feel like being flashy. Judging by the small wooden cross hanging in the dining room, Amy guessed it was the latter.

They were confused only for a moment to see Dan was not alone at the door, and he had barely explained the situation when they embraced her, literally, enthusiastically. Rebecca seemed almost more excited to meet her than see Dan, which was saying something. As they sat in the dining room drinking coffee, she kept telling Amy how beautiful she was, in an almost rehearsed way.

“Good gosh Jim, isn’t Amy just gorgeous?” Rebecca would say, and Jim would nod in assent. “Look at that blonde hair! I think she looks like the girl in  _Gone Girl,_  the one who frames her husband - not that you’d do that.” She winked good-naturedly, as if they were old pals. “Do you...have a husband?” 

Dan stood up abruptly, making his cup wobble. "I’m gonna go to bed. Amy, there’a a guest room at the end of the hall if you want to escape...whatever this is.”

“The guest room isn’t there anymore, hon.” His mother said. Dan paused, sighed, and leaned forward, both hands on the top of his chair.

“Have you filed an AMBER alert?”

Rebecca clucked her tongue. “Don’t take that tone. We turned it into a crafts room about two years ago.” She looked from her husband to Amy and then beckoned her son closer, speaking in a hushed stage whisper. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to sleep in different rooms to make us feel comfortable. You’re thirty-five, we weren’t born yesterday.”

Dan backed up like he was blown away with dynamite. “No. _No_ , Amy is…we're colleagues. _Were_ colleagues.”

The Egans suddenly looked a little confused and uncomfortable. Dan rubbed his face. “Ugh, what about Mary’s room? Or Dave’s?”

“They’re our hobby rooms. We only kept yours for when Bethy and Katie sleep over."

Amy stood, waving brushing imaginary crumbs off her hands. “Yeah, you know, I can go find a hotel. Not a problem.”

Rebecca and Jim exchanged a look of what could only be described as mild panic.

“I suppose I could get the air mattress, put it on the floor in Danny’s room.” Jim said. Rebecca nodded fervently.

“Yes, do that. Danny, go help your dad.”

Amy slowly sat back down at the table, nodding grimly, like she’d just been sentenced to life.

* * *

Jim didn’t really need help, he just took the air mattress out of the closet and got a mechanical pump pushing air into it. Dan took out his dried up contacts and kicked off his jeans, sitting in his boxers on the real bed, looking around at his old bedroom. 

The walls were still dark blue, but most of his posters had been taken down, replaced with his niece’s crayon scribbles and finger paintings. His night stand had no alarm clock now, just a plastic nightlight in the shape of a crescent moon. The drawers were all open at varying degrees, and all scary.

“That should do it.” He dad got off the ground with a groan.

Dan said nothing, looking it the window at the trees across the street. Jim crossed his arms. “It’s good you’re taking a break from all that. Living like that can't be good for you.”

“I’m really tired, Dad.” He said loudly, pointedly. Jim took the hint and lumbered towards the door.

“It’s okay to take a break.” He reiterated. Dan yanked his laptop out of his bag and banged it open, slamming his back against the headboard with a huff and not another word. 

Jim sighed. “I’ll see you in the morning."

Dan didn’t look up, already clicking open six new windows, not even blinking until his father closed his door. When he did, he groaned and slumped over, squeezing his stinging eyes shut. Trying to see his computer screen with the naked eye was murder, giving him a headache only a few seconds in. He hadn't thought to pack any new contacts. Why hadn't he thought to bring  _anything_  useful? Like a gun?

He squinted back down at his computer screen, straining for a few more seconds, before, without thinking, he leaned over to the bedside drawer and felt around through his old papers and books and crap until he caught hold of one of the silicon temples, pulling the plastic glasses out and shoving them on his nose. 

His prescription had gotten a little stronger since high school, but the blurriness did subside a great deal with the help of his old back up pair. He opened a new, slightly clearer window and started making lists of DC think tanks with members he could charm. 

It was strangely quiet in the room, on the dark street, as he worked. All he heard was the soft click of his computer keys, the wind whipping through the trees and the rain bouncing off the pavement outside. He couldn't say it wasn't nice to be able to focus on his work without seven hundred people running around and shouting and phones ringing off the wall.

"Oh my God."

He jumped; The door had opened while he was engrossed in his job hunt. Amy was standing in the threshold, wearing sweats and an American University tee-shirt from her tiny suitcase. Her phone was in her hand, and flashed briefly as she took a picture of him. He yanked the glasses off his face.

"Hey, you better fucking delete that!"

"It humanizes you, like when when a shark gets it's fin stuck in a plastic wrapper."

He flipped her off and dropped the glasses back in the drawer, slamming it shut.

“Oh, my God, are you actually going to blind yourself rather than wear glasses in front of someone?”

He clicked his tongue and went back to a slow plod on the Department of Defenses page. “It’s all about image, Ames.”

She sat down on the air mattress, shaking her head. “You don’t know how to turn it off. You’re like a retarded light switch.”

His mouth twisted into a condescending smile as his head pulsed with the strain. “Not your best.”

Amy settled into the mattress, holding her phone close to her face above her eyes. “It’s this fucking New York air. It’s too woodsy and Amish.”

They both looked at their screens for awhile longer. Dan’s head and the top of his nose were starting to pound.

* * *

_“What the hell are those? You look like a faggot.” Chris and Tyler corner him while the class is herded out of the library._

_Dan sets his jaw, using all his willpower not to self-consciously rip his new glasses off of his face. He just holds his new Abraham Lincoln biography to his chest a little more tightly._ Neither of them can probably even read _, he tells himself._

_“How do these make me a faggot?” He asked crossly, raising his eyebrows false bravado at their stupidity. Chris and Tyler just lean in, blocking out the light. They had both hit growth spurts before him, and tower seven inches above his head like dark, ten-year-old gods. He considers jumping on their light up sneakers until they scream._

_“Mrs. Leon! Danny said a bad word!”_

_Their teacher glances over, eyes running over the two boys she could actually see without bending down. “All of you, knock it off. Danny, don’t let me hear you talking like that.”_

_“I wasn’t!”_

_“Disrespectful behavior means you don’t get to go to recess.” She reminds him, and he bites his tongue, his hands closing into fists pinned to his side._

_Chris and Tyler dissolve into giggles at Dan’s defeat, running to the front of the line, but not before trying to rip his book out of his hands for good measure. He yanks it back with some sort of strange growl, which only made them laugh harder._

_At recess, he sets his glasses on the blacktop and drops his book on them until the lenses are ground to dust._

_He hates these things. He hates how they look and he hates how they made people see him and he hates people. He hates hates hates them._

* * *

He gave up fifteen minutes later and lay flat on his back, staring up at his ceiling. The girls had decorated it with gooey pink star stickers. Amy was still texting.

“Look, I’m sorry you got stuck here.” He told her. She shrugged, her thumbs racing back and forth across the keyboard. 

“Sue’s sending someone for me tomorrow. Besides, it’s kind of fun to see the real you.”

He turned on his side at this, his posture as defensive as it could be when lying in one’s childhood bed. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“You know, the you that you are under the suit. When you’re not trying to charm anybody or further your career. You’re just an angry village boy.” The smirk was clear in her voice, even if he hadn’t been looking at her.

He almost turned on the light night so she could see the intensity of his glare. “I‘m whoever the fuck I say I am. You can just fuck off.”

He jerked, almost thrashed, away from her, staring at the wall, breathing hard through his teeth. He rapped his fist in tiny little punches against his jaw.  _Keep it together Egan. Keep it together._

Amy stared at the curve of his side as he breathed unevenly. She didn’t say anything, but her phone ate up all it’s data and cast blue light on the outline of his back long into the night, as the storm raged on and thunder rattled the house.


	4. Small Town, Small Dreams

The morning came without the sun, the rain still falling in a torrential downpour outside the house. The sky was a monochromatic blanket of dark gray cloud, confusing everyone's senses. It was almost noon before the town began to stir. Amy was already up and dressed before Dan woke, which was not unusual. For someone who lived in DC, he slept better than anyone she knew - it was probably because the part of his soul that felt guilt was missing.

She briefly observed him, his breath smooth and shallow, his features still and strangely young, before shaking it off.  _Stop being weird Amy._  

The hallway outside his bedroom was covered with pictures she hadn’t been able to see in the darkness the night before. Dozens of photographs of two tan little boys and a chubby little girl at Disneyland, in inflatable tubes on the river, at high school graduations. There were ribbons too, and newspaper articles. It seemed Rebecca and Jim had framed every moment of their children’s lives. Little scraps about one of the Egan children starring in a school play, placing first in Policy Debate, catching an enormous fish. A lot of the accolades were Dan's, but even more were Dave's.

"Oh my God. You’re actually here!"

Amy jumped, falling against the side of the wall. The prettiest woman she had ever seen was standing at the top of the stairs. She had shiny dark hair and curves to rival Marilyn Monroe. She was wearing a pink sweater set and dark jeans, and grinning with perfect straight white teeth. 

“Mary?” She guessed. Mary nodded distractedly before plowing past her, banging into Dan’s room, waking him.

“What the-"

Amy peered in around the door. Dan was sitting up in bed, his covers bunched all around him. Mary hugged him so tightly he actually gasped for air.

“Stop. Mare, stop it."

"You look so good! So grown up. I swear, every time I see you you look older."

"That's how time works." Dan grumbles, and wrenches himself from her grip. “Jesus, get ahold of yourself."

“My baby brother vanishes off the face of the Earth for four years and I’m supposed to 'get ahold of myself?’” Mary flopped dramatically on the base of the bed. “Sorry we can’t all be Washington robots, Danny.”

He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Glad to see you’re feeling better after your nip and tuck."

Amy quickly averted her eyes, knowing Dan had gone in for the kill. Plastic surgery was one of the last ways to destroy someone’s credibility in DC - Dan called it one of his Fucking Fail Safes.

But Mary didn’t seem embarrassed. She just laughed and jutted her chin up for better inspection. “Do you like it? I think it makes my neck look much better. Longer, right?”

“Yeah, sure, like a fucking swan. Get out.” Dan shooed his sister away, and she kissed his forehead, bouncing into the hallway. She turned her blinding smile on Amy and she felt herself shrink away from the blast. 

“I just got my chin tucked. I say if you’ve got the means, why not treat yourself? Not that you need it, you look like some kind of warrior princess. Amy right?”

She smiled and weakly returned Mary’s vigorous handshake. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?"

"You look like you need coffee and a wi-fi connection.”

And her arm was being clutched and dragged away as she thought about Dan. Being as functioning as he was coming from a family of deranged Disney characters was looking more and more like a miracle.

* * *

Dan shifted through his old clothes, finding a Cornell University tee shirt and old acid washed jeans from when he was trying to sleep with this girl who was really into The Grateful Dead. They were both a little tight, but his other clothes were starting to smell. He padded downstairs, looking for his phone charger and something to eat as quietly as he could.

“Hey baby boy. Where’s your… _friend_ , Amy?” Rebecca asked as she and Jim sat at the breakfast nook, drinking coffee and eating cereal. It seemed they had gotten a late start as well. 

Dan turned on his heel, his dying cell phone clutched to his ear in a mock call.

“No no no Danny, come back, I was just teasing!” Rebecca clucked, carefully climbing off her stool. “I made coffee, come, sit with your old parents, we wanna talk to you.”

Rolling his eyes, he reluctantly sat down at the table across the room with an embarrassingly juvenile huff. “Mary took her down to the library so she could get some work done.”

“Oh, Mary stopped by! I didn’t even see her.” Rebecca hummed as she poured Dan a coffee. Outside the windows, lightning flashed with an almost simultaneous crack of thunder. Dan jumped without meaning too, inwardly flinching at his behavior. The ceiling fixtures flickered on and off for a moment.

“Yikes, the devil’s beating his wife.” Rebecca proclaimed. 

“Bet you’re glad you don’t have to go out in this storm.” Jim said, half to his mug. Dan’s fingers clacked down on the wooden table. 

“Dad. We’re not going to do this.” He took a long sip from his cup and almost gagged. God, he missed lattes. 

“Just saying, this might be your sign from-“

“Don’t you dare.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Rebecca recited, and Jim nodded in agreement. “That's what we wanna talk to you about. Danny love, we miss having you here so much.”

“I’m here right now.” He threw his arms open with a sarcastic smile. “Drink me in.”

His parents exchanged a look and his mother sat down across the table from him. He felt his elbows lock. 

“Your father's old firm did a lot of work for the Syracuse mayor’s office.” She said carefully, her right hand absentmindedly rubbing the pendant hanging from her neck. “And he got to know the staff really well over the years.” She sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “And, ah, he put out some feelers after you…your mishap with the..."

“Jordan in the Press Office is retiring. The job is yours if you want it.” Jim said bluntly, and took another sip of coffee without breaking eye contact with his son.

There was a moment of silence. Even the rain seemed to hold it’s breath. Dan opened and closed his mouth. His stomach didn’t seem to be where it was supposed to be.

“Danny?” Rebecca looked nervous. 

“I…I’m speechless.” He sputtered, letting go of his coffee cup.

“Good speechless or bad-“

“This was all a trap, wasn’t it?” Mirthless laughter came out of his mouth without consent or real meaning. “Convincing me to come back to this minuscule cow turd, saying that you were  _worried_  about me.”

“Language.” Jim rumbled. 

“You’re just trying to get me stuck back here.” Dan stood and Rebecca did too.

“We know it’s not Washington, but it’s something you’re so good at, and you wouldn’t be so far away-“

“I  _want_ to be far away!” Dan shouted. “I left Minoa because _wanted_  to! I still do!” 

Rebecca took a deep breath, her lip starting to tremble. Jim pressed his lips together in a thin line and shook his head in disappointment.

“I just want you to be happy.” She whispered. “I am worried about you."

Dan swallowed and stepped away from the table. “Don’t be."

He took the stairs two at a time and slammed his bedroom door so far his nieces star stickers fell off the ceiling. 

He was so angry. His hands were shaking. Really shaking.

_Oh fuck._

He slid down the door, nicking his back on the brass doorknob, his legs folding underneath him as they started to tingle, and then go numb.

_Fuck. Not here. Not now._

But he could already feel himself slipping, his breath catching in his throat. He lifted his hands, waving them vaguely on either side of his head, knuckles brushing against his door.

Rain pounded on the window, rattling the wooden frame. His head felt fuzzy and strangely weightless. There was another loud rumble and the lights blinked out all around him. He couldn't see.

* * *

_“What did you do?"_

_Mary and Dave were running down the trail in front of him, sneakers smacking against the dirt and piles of dead orange pine needles._

_“Ew! Oh my God, is that blood?”_

_The river was rushing in his ears and his hands were warm and sticky. There were eyes on him, big scared eyes. Why was everyone looking at him like that?_

_“Is that…is that a fucking animal?"_

* * *

“Dan? Jesus fuck, what are you doing?” Amy’s heels were by his face, her voice floating down from somewhere far above. He wanted to curl up, hide his face, vanish from the floor, from Minoa, from her line of vision. 

He didn’t disappear. He felt sharp nails gripping one of his arms, hot breath blowing against his cheek. The glow of an omnipresent cellphone was burning in the corner of his eye.  

“Okay, is this the same thing as last time? You’ve got…you know, The London Look.” She waved her cellphone vaguely at his pale face. “It says to take deep breaths, seven in, seven out.”

He wasn’t going to get out of here. He couldn’t ever get out of here. He was a Minoa boy, and he would live and die in these walls on this street. His mouth tasted like metal and blood. Dark blood, oozing out of a furry skull. What did he do. What could he do. He was stuck.

"Come on, I’m not your fucking Lamaze instructor. Do it.”

He tried to focus on her hand on his sleeve, on the light in the darkness, and did what she said. Slowly, he could breathe again, see again. He was in his old bedroom, backed into the corner, but he wasn’t dying. Amy was still on her haunches, texting someone as Dan came back into himself. The power was still out.

“You ready to be an adult?" She asked. Eyebrows arched but no eye contact. He swallowed in a feeble attempt to sooth his dry throat and stood up, pressing his hands against the wall for balance. He took one step, and then another, until his knees bumped the edge of his mattress and he sat down, hard. 

“What are you doing back?"

“Your manic cheerleader sister tried to take me to the library but it was closed. The power is going out all over this goat toilet.” She sat down on the bed next to him as she looked over her email for the fifth time in thirty seconds. “Please tell me Smiley McCheerful and Adderall Barbie are the only siblings you got.”

Somewhere, deep in the pit of his stomach. he felt the damp, faint need to defend Dave and Mary, but he just didn’t have the energy to follow through. He held up a clammy hand. “Please, I don’t want to talk about any of these pricks.”

She looked for a moment as though she was going to say something else, but was interrupted by a small, tinny beep. The screen of Amy’s phone went dark. They both stared at it like it was a three-headed alien.

“Did that just-“

“Yeah.”

“You can’t charge it without any-“

“Thank you, Shithead Holmes.”

“What are-“

Amy stood up, very carefully, and crossed the room to her suitcase. In a stiff, reheated calm, she pulled a tall, skinny white bottle of vodka from inside it’s folds. “Do you wanna get drunk?”

“Very much.”

* * *

It was hardly past dinner time, but the clouds outside made it dark as night. Dan and Amy lay on their backs on the air mattress, which swished and tossed them rather dramatically back and forth with every move they made. He could faintly hear his parents wandering around downstairs, but they seemed to be following the same unofficial code they'd enacted when he was a teenager; _Don't go into Dan's room, don't talk to him, don't look at him. You can't help him when he's like this._

“Okay, okay…what is the worst sex you ever had?” Dan asked, and his head was too close to Amy’s face, his voice to lilting and flirty, but he couldn't stop himself. In her haze, she didn’t seem to mind so much.

“Oh, don’t even get me started.” She took a little swig of the vodka, the second bottle she had brought (“It’s the beauty of train travel - no smaller than three ounces bullshit.”), and kicked off her heels, her pale pantyhose fidgeting against the mattress. “You go, I have to narrow it down to the top ten.”

“Ah, I slept with Dave’s fiancé.”  He smirked sheepishly. Amy whacked his shoulder with her fist, which was still strangely closed around an imaginary cell phone, fingers clenched like a Cerebral Palsy patient. 

“The Dave who looks at you like you’re the fucking moon? How hasn’t he killed you?”

“It was a long time ago, they didn’t even end up getting married.”

“Yeah, cause you stuck your dick in her! That’s not bad sex, that’s just you being an asshole.” She tipped the bottle towards him, brushing his lower lip with the rim. "Try again.”

He took another sip as he looked at her, trying to come up with something shocking, scandalous. Make her laugh, make her forget about his stupid freakout. He was just drunk enough to say -

“I had sex with Jonah.”

Amy scoffed and whacked him again. When his expression didn’t change, her normally big blue eyes turned gargantuan. 

“NO!”

He nodded, enjoying the tingling heat in his face that came from knowing something Amy Brookheimer didn’t - even if it was mortifying. “Yeah. Right when I was starting out, at the inaugral ball. That Addams Family reject was already working up at the White House, I was trying to find an in.”

“Oh my God. Now I can’t stop picturing you on top of him.”

“…actually…”

“NO! Oh my God, that must have been  _horrible_.”

“Wanna know a secret? It wasn’t actually too bad. You tell Hagrid’s bastard where to put his hands and he gets the job done." 

“Oh my God. Oh my God. I have to go pray to those sticks in your dining room, I feel dirty."

“What, like you’ve never let anyone fuck you to get ahead?”

“I slept with you, but that was more like routine car matienence than any sort of statement.”

He smirks a little, and leans forward, out into the night. “You…don’t really like sex, do you?”

Amy scrunched up her face and shook her head. “It’s not, like painful on my delicate constitution or some shit, I just never really get the urge have it. You know, like you with genuine human connection."

“Oh fuck you.” He sighed and gave her back the bottle, lying flat on his back with his arms sprawled out. “We’ll get out of here tomorrow.”

“We?”

“You know what I mean.”

Amy sighed and turned over, a frizzy sheet of blonde hair falling across his neck and chest. Hs heart started to speed up again, but not in the scary way. Slowly, with the precision of a bomb technician, he wrapped his hand, and then his arm, around her as she curled up against him.

“If you tell anybody about this I’ll have you shipped off to Gitmo.” She mumbled into his chest, but she didn’t pull away.

* * *

_“You like that, don’t you? Like Daddy’s good stuff.” Jonah’s hands were gripping Dan’s hips with all the grace and pressure of a drunk elephant, his thumbs rubbing the top of his ass. Even Dan’s drunk and fuzzy mind knew the tall drink of poison was being ridiculous. He was still on his hands and knees in a strangely nondescript office for him, though._

_“Mmm. Mmm! Slower, slower, right there.” He lurched forward a little with each thrust - Jonah was so goddamn eager - and he felt warm, full._

_It felt like something. He was feeling something._

_He gasped like a little virgin when he came, but it was more out of shock rather than anything else._

* * *

He woke late in the night, sweaty with summer heat and Amy’s skin and something like panic.


	5. Nobody Toldya This Is Gonna Fold Ya

It took him a moment to realize why he had woken up: The power had come back on, every light in the house suddenly blazing in the stormy night. Next to him, Amy didn’t stir. This was not surprising. He had seen the woman fall asleep standing up on a coach bus. For a bizarre and wild moment he gripped her shoulder, almost shaking her awake, but stopped himself just in time. She couldn’t see this happen to him, not again.

He felt tight, pinched, like every muscle in his body was pulled in towards his ribs. His heart was beating too loud, and the lights were too bright. He pulled himself off the air mattress to flip the light switch, but found his feet still going, out the bedroom door.

 

* * *

_“Go bash that thing’s head in!” Kyle jabbed his finger in the direction of the woods, the three other ninth graders on their bikes following his finger with their gaze. Dan did too._

_A mutt, limping in and out of the trees. Scraggly gray fur was matted to it’s slim frame, it's eyes droopy and yellow. It looked due to drop anyway._

_He turned back to Kyle, cool Kyle, who could make all the older kids respect him, stop pushing him around, maybe even vote for him in the student council elections in a couple of years. And he grinned._

_“Done."_

* * *

He crept down the stairs, carefully skipping the fourth one, the creaky one, without even thinking about it.

 

He was into the kitchen, delicately pulling the phone off it's hook. His fingers twitched. It took him a second to remember the number - he hadn't strayed from speed dial in years. 

The phone rang once. Twice. He felt strangely cold in the empty breakfast nook. His shoulders ached.

_"...hello?"_ Dave was still mostly asleep, his voice groggy and slurred. 

“Do you remember when I killed that dog?"

_"Dan?"_ Dave was so out of it. He was probably lying in his king sized bed, inane pictures of him and Sarah and their daughters on the bureau. 

"When I was a kid. I was like eleven or twelve? Those guys you were friends with-"

_“What-what are you-"_

"I hit it with a rock. Down by the river."

_"Danny, of course I remember you killing the fucking dog. The whole town remembers, it was weird."_

Dan shook his head, though he knew no one could see him. He didn't seem to be able to stop. “Weird.” He repeated.

_“Yeah, it was disturbing."_

“Fuck you Dave, it was-it was blowing off steam."

_"Dan."_ There was rustling, and he could hear his brother sitting up in bed, yawning. _"Sixth-graders do not_ blow off steam _by killing animals. It's psychotic. You know that, right?”_

_You know that, right?_  Like Dan was an idiot. Like they were still kids and Dave and Mary had all the answers and he was just their fucked up baby brother.

What did they know. They were stuck here living boring static lives with their boring static families. He wasn't like that. He wouldn't ever be like that.

* * *

_“Here, use this.” The boy behind Kyle, on the green bicycle, reached down and tossed a rock, a thick heavy gray one the size of a foot, at Dan. He caught it and the boys chortled._

_He had to keep himself from beaming. It was like they were his friends, hanging out, not like he’d wandered away from Mary and Dave when they were supposed to be watching him in the backyard. Serves them right, trying to babysit Dan Egan._

* * *

_“Hello?"_ Dave was still talking on the other end of the line, sounding more alert. _"Are you okay? Did something happen with Mom and Dad? I can call Mary, she could come get you.“_

“Why are you being nice to me? I slept with Janet, I killed that dog, I've met my nieces, like, twice. Why haven’t you kicked me in the nuts?”

_“Jesus Ch-Danny, while that is tempting, I’m not angry at you. I know you can’t help it.”_

“What?”

_“The dog, the thing with Janet, the way you talk and act - that’s just who you are. Just the way you’re wired. I can’t get mad at something you can't contr-"_

He hung up. His breathing was slow and forced. His chest felt like it might implode.

* * *

_The rock was heavy in his hand as he pulled it back the final time, his work done, the horrifying sound of stone and bone ceasing. There was a pause as he looked up, slightly out of breath, slightly muddy where the river mixed with the forest, water seeping in and trying to accomplish the impossible tasking of cleansing the dirt from from dirt._

_Kyle and his friends weren't laughing anymore. They were staring at him like he was from outer space._

_“What the fuck?” One of them shouted._

* * *

He walked out of the kitchen, out the back door and into the yard, the wet green grass sticking to his bare feet. The wind blew harder than ever, as if to make up for the newly absent rain. The moon hung large and yellow overhead. Inside the house, he could hear the phone ringing again. Dave calling back.

He broke into a run.

* * *

_The blood was getting darker on his hands as it dried, there were more footsteps coming. The other boys wouldn’t stop looking at him. Mary rounded a tree, her dark braids bouncing against her chest as she drew closer._

_“Danny? Sweetie, you can’t run off like that, Mom’d kill…ew, oh my God, is that blood?"_

_Mary was looking now too, and shoot, Dave was there._

_“What did you do?” Dave was shouting, not at him, at Kyle, who held up his hands._

_“It was a joke! It was a joke, he just did it! Your freak brother is insane!"_

* * *

The river was close to spilling over with all the rain that it had become engorged with. The dark water swirled and churned a twisted past through the woods, the leaves rustling above it.

It looked the same. It never changed.

* * *

_He was starting to shake, like it wasn’t July but the middle of Minoa winter, when the trees were bogged down with snow and everything froze. Everything except the river, it moved too fast. It was always moving, always getting away, you couldn't look at the same bit of river twice._

_Mary shuddering, holding his hands by the wrists, up at her face, examining them. Dave shouting, he could still feel eyes on the back of his neck, on his cheeks, they were everywhere, never stopping-_

_His fingers were suddenly wet and freezing, Mary dragged him to the bank, forcing his hands into the stream._

_“It’s okay Danny.” She was smiling but it wasn’t her real smile, something was wrong, everything was wrong, he’d broken his sister’s smile, why wouldn’t everyone stop looking at him- “It’s okay, we’re gonna get cleaned up and then we’re gonna go home, okay? We're gonna go home."_

* * *

He was in the dirt, the mud now, his feet turning brown, his sight going black. He was on his knees, like he had been for Jonah, like he had been for so long.

He shoved his hands under the swirling surf, too hard, the force of his palms pushing up the dirt and sand and rocks into piles, mini mountains to scale. It was cutting and bitter and raw and he didn’t know why he was doing it, what he was trying to wash off, maybe he was trying to soak something back in.

* * *

_“Get out of here! Don’t tell anybody about this!” Dave was almost waving a stick at Kyle and his friends and they twisted their dirt bikes around. “Nothing happened!"_

_The red from the blood wasn’t chipping off like paint, not floating away like the leaves and sticks and dog hairs that sailed the river. It was dissolving, melting like it was disappearing into his skin. Get it off get it off get it off - he had to stop - he needed air - this was nothing. What had happened was nothing - nothing happened, you have to breathe._

_Breathe Danny. Nothing happened._

* * *

“AHHHHHHHHH!” A loud, choked wail came out of his lips before he could even think to stop it, but it was over just as quickly, vanished into the night air, disintegrating to the rush of the river. Gone.

Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. He was so empty. He was so broken. He was so done.


	6. Isaiah 43:18

_Amy, we're sending a helicopter to pick you up on the Minoa High School football field at 0900 hours. The president wants you back in DC for a strategy meeting by eleven. - Sue_  

It was the first message that popped up when Amy shoved her charger into the outlet, relief flowing over her like a soothing balm when she woke and realized the power was back on. She was so entranced with answering the thousands of texts and emails that had accumulated whole she'd been AWOL that it took her a full half hour to realize something was missing - Dan. He wasn't next to her when she woke, he wasn't in his own bed, or the bathroom. He vanished from the upstairs.

The kitchen was packed when Amy rushed into it, and she immediately wished she hadn’t. Dan’s parents, siblings, and two little girls she could only assume were his nieces all looked up when she entered. She turned from side to side, but the one time she needed him to, Dan wasn't breathing down her neck. She pulled her packed suitcase closer to her feet, shielding her legs.

“Amy! Good morning, you look beautiful!” Rebecca beamed, that oversized, try-hard kind of smile. She and the rest of the adults were standing around the breakfast nook, nursing coffees and glazed cinnamon buns on little porcelain plates. The two dark-haired girls sat coloring at the kitchen table, looking as sticky and germ-covered as Amy often imagined children were up close. The bigger of the two stood on her chair and pointed at her as if spotting land.

 

“You have pretty hair!”

Amy smiled a thin, perfunctory smile, the kind she gave senile old senators who said she reminded them of a girl they knew in the war. “Thank you…Dave’s daughter.”

“My name is Katie!” She yelled, clearly having no sense of volume. 

“Good for you.” She turned towards the adults. “Have you seen Dan? He has to do something for me.”

There was a strange, stilted pause, and everyone exchanged brief eye contact. Mary broke the silence, gently pushing a perfect bouncy curl out of her eyes.

“He’s sleeping upstairs."

“No he’s not, I was just-“

“We put him to bed in our parents' room.”

“Mare, don’t embarrass him.” Rebecca hissed. Mary rolled her eyes dramatically, setting her coffee down to cross her arms.

“Oh Mother, there’s no need to be such a Repressed Catholic about it.”  She leaned forward over her elbows and lowered her voice for dramatic effect. “Dan had one of his...episodes last night." 

 

Rebecca snatched her coffee out from under her and handed it to Amy, whose free hand curled around it automatically. 

“Hey!” Mary protested.

“Don't be so melodramatic, missy. This is Danny’s business, it's not right to just go out talking about it.”

“It’s not the first time this has happened.” Dave chimed in, as though that wasn’t obvious from the heavy, defeated way the family was carrying themselves. 

“Yeah, I know. How do you fix it?”

The Egans all looked at Amy like a space alien, standing in her black skirt suit and pointy heels, still gripping the used coffee. She could read in between the lines of “episode”. She’d seen Dan fall apart in London. He was spiraling again, the second time in as many days. This place caused an allergic reaction in him, his freak outs like hives.

“Fix what?” Dave finally said, tentatively, a little too gently, like he was humoring a disabled child.

“You know, get him back to his normal-"  _Sociopathic, man-eating, slimy and sort of genial, deep, DEEP down_ “-self.”

Another strained, sliding eye silence. Amy fought the urge to throw the coffee cup down to the ground, letting it smash all over the stupid finished hardwood floors. Didn’t these people realize how much time they’d save every day if they just _spit it the fuck ou_ t?

Jim finally coughed, staring down and his cup, and rumbled - “Heck if I know.”

“That kind of  _is_  his normal self, you know?” Dave said, with a faux-sheepish smile that was clearly a valued part of the Egan charm arsenal. “You know him, he’s an edgy guy.”

“Yeah, that’s just Danny.” Mary agreed. 

Now it was Amy’s turn to stare. These people, who talked about Dan like he hung the moon and stars, who wanted nothing more than to hug and feed and love him, apparently thought his breakdowns were just an odd personality quirk - Although maybe they were, in this hodunk, suicide-inducing beginning of a Stephen King novel kind of town.

Rebecca seemed to be correctly interpreting Amy’s silence as disgust, but not in the right direction. She rushed forward and herded Amy into the group at the breakfast nook, practically pulling her by her elbow.

“Oh sweetheart, it’s really nothing you should fuss too much over, I think all that work he does down in Washington makes it worse. All we can do is pray that he’ll make some better choices. Who knows, just being around a pretty girl like you could help, and then-“

“What? Then we’ll get married?”

The timing was so perfect Amy half expected a studio audience to gasp. Dan was standing in the kitchen threshold, in a slightly muddy Cornell t-shirt and baggy gray sweatpants that must have been his father’s. His eyes were puffy around the edges and his voice was hoarse and dry. There was a collective tightening of hands around plates and countertop, and Dave's eyes went for his daughters.  _Holy shit,_ Amy realized. _they’re afraid. Afraid of fucking Dan._

“There’s my beautiful boy!” Rebecca cheered falsely, and moved to make more coffee. Dan took a tiny step back into the hallway. Dave and Mary exchanged a look and she cleared her throat.

“Hey Bethany, Katie! How about we go play in the living room for a little while?” There was that megawatt grin again, dazzling the little girls. “Bethy, Nana’s been telling me all about your new ballet class, how about you show me some of your new moves?"

The children went away amicably enough, with a few curious glances at Dan - they couldn’t quite place him. Mary chewed her glossy lip, looking over her shoulders as she led them out - if her ears could perk up in eavesdropping like a dog, they surely would’ve.

Mary was barely out the door when Rebecca clicked her tongue and looked at her youngest son, speaking carefully. “Danny, I just think-“

“I know what you think. You think I need to marry Amy and move back to Minoa and have three blonde babies and teach Poly-Sci at SUNY Cortland until I drop dead.” Dan’s voice was low, put his words were quick and forceful, coming out with spikes on every edge and poison in the breathes between. Rebecca closed her eyes and sighed out her nose.

“Dan, don’t talk to Mom like that, we’re not trying to upset you.” Dave chided, looking disappointed. Dan didn’t seem to register that he’d spoken, still looking at his mother, speaking in a heated, stream-of-conciousness sort of tone.

“I don’t want to marry Amy. I don’t want to marry anybody. I don’t want to teach, and the only way I am coming back to upstate fucking New York is in a _coffin_.”

“Oh!“ Rebecca was teary remarkably fast, a plump hand pressing flat against her collar bone. Jim rumbled in anger again. Dan groaned and rolled his neck.

“Come on Mom, don’t start. This isn't news."

Dave jumped in. “Buddy, she’s not saying you have to do all that stuff right now, we just don’t want you to wait too late and then wish you had.”

Dan closed his eyes, vaguely clutching at the side of his hair. There was a brief moment, not even a whole second in time, where he fell back, shrinking into his too big pants, out of fight.

And Amy felt herself speak.

“...Why do you keep saying  _we_?” She said slowly, lifting her head up. Dave blinked at her, slightly confused on weather he should be Dave the affable realtor or Dave the pissed older brother. The Egans had a remarkable talent for forgetting people they were talking about were in fact, in the room.

“Sorry?”

“ _We’re_  not trying to upset you,  _we_ don’t want you to wait too late.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not his mom.”

Dave rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know that, but I agree-“

“And even if you were, what the fuck do you know?” 

Dan opened his eyes.

Jim frowned. “I’d thank you not to use that language in this house.”

“The only reason you want him to do those disgusting fucking social chores is because you’re fucking terrified of what he is without them.”

Rebecca gasped again, sitting down hard at the stool next to the nook. A delighted glint was appearing in Dan's eyes, growing brighter. There was the woman he had confusing, often sexual feelings for. He pushed his shoulders back.

Jim stood, pressing his fingers down as Dave openly gaped, shocked. “Do not insult us in our own house.”

“Jim, hon, don’t-“ Rebecca said, almost whined, still trying to stitch the situation into some semblance of proper. But Amy just threw her hands in the air, spilling a little lukewarm coffee down her sleeve. 

“Then I’m leaving this fucking Stepford Wife Training Camp.” She finally set down the coffee on the kitchen table and walked out into the hallway, her hands over her head in surrender. “Dan, I’m going to the high school football field, Sue is sending a helicopter. I need you to take me, Google Earth, wisely, hasn't mapped this town.”

She pushed past him, grazing his bare arm with the rough polyester of her suit, and like a magnet, her turned with her. They’d barely made it two steps down the hallway before she turned around and stuck her head back into the kitchen.

“Look at your lives. Look at him. Is it such a bad thing he doesn't fit?”

And without waiting for a response, she clicked to the front door, already dialing a number, and swung it open.

Dan looked at his parents, who were both blinking rapidly. A cycle of confusion, anger, and embarrassment were flickering across their faces. Dave’s head swiveled back and forth, unsure who’s side to take.

“Danny, don’t just do the thing where you freak out. Please just talk to us like a grown up.”

 _I’m never going to be a grown up to you people._ Dan dropped his hand, still feeling the bristles of his hair tingling against his fingertips. They formed into a fist, a thumb jutting out over his shoulder, at the swinging door. 

“I-I gotta go."

* * *

The air was muggy and hot after the storm, giving the road a swampy sort of feeling that was reminiscent of DC. Dan’s stomach hurt just thinking about it.

He focused on the sound of Amy's fingers already on her phone, as they walked out of his parent’s tidy lawn and into the rougher street, the artificial clicking noise the screen made when she hit it. He had never thought about that before, how the sound had had to be added, for aesthetic.  

They didn't talk for a few minutes, focusing carefully avoiding the thick leafy branches that the storm had torn from their trees, tossing them all over the street. The sun was beating down with an unexpected ferocity, like it was trying to make up for it’s last few days of absence. Dan felt his legs and arms sticking to the fabric of his clothes. His own phone was back on the floor of his childhood bedroom, the battery long dead. He decided he didn't care. It was time for an upgrade anyway.

“So Selina’s speech for the convention is running three and a half minutes long. Mike can’t figure out what to cut.” Amy told him briskly. She was carrying her pumps pinned under her bent arm, her pantyhose tearing around her toes as she walked across the pavement. It took him a moment to pick the question out of her flat tone. 

“Um, she doesn’t need so many personal anecdotes. She always wants too many, keep it to two.” He pictured rusty gears in his head, squeaking and groaning as they struggled to turn. 

“Is her stance on foreign relations _firm_ or _strong_?” Her fingers were flying across the digital keys. If his outsides were as scattered and raw as his insides, Amy didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t care.

“Firm.” He said quietly.

“Should it end with hope for a better tomorrow or the dire straights of the present that need to be addressed immediately?”

“Amy. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

He nodded at her phone. “Whatever self-serving pseudosympathy you’re trying project by asking me this shit.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about Dan.”

“It’s like when they make mental patients finger paint so they feel productive.”

“It worked though. We got all the way here without you going Sylvia Plath on me.”

Dan looked away from Amy's hands for the first time on their walk and, with a mild shock, saw the long, green football field looming at the end of the street, next to   the blocky brick building he went to high school in, and the three reunions he had skipped. Above it all, the dull, grating roar of a small black helicopter punctured the morning air as it lowered itself onto the uniform green grass, kicking up wind that tossed the already fragile trees up and down the street. 

“Princess Amy’s chariot awaits.” He said with empty smarm. She turned toward the field, still texting.

“I’d offer you a ride, but, you know-" She waved a hand at his entire person." -kind of a walking national security risk right now.” 

He held his hand low to his hip and flipped her off, squinting up at the presidential crest on the side of the copter, glinting in the sun. “I hate it here.”

“I gathered."

"My life was a fucking horror show here, you know? I wore glasses here. I bashed a dog’s head in here. I have an idiotic family that I don’t fit into here.”

“Yeah, they’re fucking weird. Smiley and Christian and vaguely apathetic. Our prime voters.” Amy didn’t look up from her phone as she spoke, but she could feel Dan smirk a little.

“They just…I’m a fucking time traveler to them. Every time I come back here I’m foreign as decent Thai food.”

“Then don’t come back here.” She lifted her head at that, looking him dead in the eyes. “This place makes you Coo Coo’s Nest.”

“I…” He swallowed all the thoughts in his head - _there’s nothing for me anywhere else, I can’t stop losing my shit, the air is all wrong_ \- the fleeting fragments that Dan Egan did not allow himself to even feel, much less form into complete sentences. 

“You’re a basket case. So is half of Washington.” She picked up her phone again. “Might as well try to function where we've got decent drugs and Wi-Fi.”

Dan said nothing. The helicopter landed on the football field, sending the grass _whooshing_ out in a large, circular wave. and he knew everyone in Minoa would be talking about it for weeks. Crazy Dan and his weird job in Washington.

Amy leaned over, looking for a moment like she might kiss his cheek. Instead she gripped his chin and pulled his face down to look at her.

“Take some Valium. And get the hell out of Doge.”

“…Yeah. Okay.” He grinned, and it didn’t even feel that plastic.  Amy nodded, slipped on her shoes, and set off down the path, sparing Dan only a fleeting glance over her shoulder. 

He watched the swing of her hips as sweat started to form on his forehead.

* * *

_“Okay, I put twenty dollars in the console, in case there’s an emergency or you run out of gas.” Rebecca was flitting around the packed car, trying to put off saying goodbye. Dan set his jaw and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. Cornell Move-In Day and his dorm and his future were waiting for him._

_“Okay. Thanks Mom.”_

_She leaned in the window, and he leaned away reflexively. “I also put a map and a YouCat in the pile on the passengers seat.”_

_The fucking youth catechism. She'd been trying to force the thing on him since he stopped going to church last year. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Mom, I don’t-“_

_“I know, I know, just…in case you lose your way.” She smiled sweetly and he felt his stomach flip over. What the hell was the matter with him?_

_He nodded. “Okay. Mom, I gotta go.” He shifted the car into drive, but Rebecca caught the edge of the open window with her hand, holding him in place. He almost screamed._

_“Don’t forget to call me when you get there, okay? And…just be safe, okay? Me and Dad are so proud of you, you’re going to do great."_

_He nodded impatiently._

_“I love you sweetheart.”_

_“Okay.” He gave her a tight smile and hit the gas as hard as he could, pulling out of the driveway with a squeal of the tires and an uncontrolled turn. The late August air whipped through his hair, his white tee shirt. He felt his muscles unclench a little bit more the farther away the car moved._

_He didn’t look back._

* * *

The blades of the copter were spinning again, loudly, but he didn't watch them as they turned, lifting, taking Amy away. He sucked in the wind, trying to reacclimate himself with his solidarity. _Next move Egan. Abort this plan, it was a fucking Dan-aster. Make your next move._

He turned his back on his high school, slowly heading back towards 34 Kendal Street, his sister’s parked car in the driveway, knowing the chump never remembered to bring her keys inside with her. He’d take it to the train station, maybe ride to the city to get a flight at JFK, maybe take the thing all the way back to DC.

He wasn’t wearing shoes and he was tired and his skin was starting to turn pink and peel. The sun was making strange, twisted fratcals of shadows and light spots through the trees. A pebble dug into the pad of his left foot.

He kept walking. All he wanted to do was move.


End file.
